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Tag Archives: why worry when you can pray

My mother used to say: “Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.” I like the Russian proverb better: “Don’t make an elephant out of a fly,” although I didn’t know there were elephants in Russia. They drink Vodka, according to a BBC News story. Another popular saying is “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” Richard Carlson used the line for his bestselling book, adding five brilliant words to the title: “And it’s all small stuff.”

Is this true; is it all small stuff? Not really. What the Philippines are presently going through is not small stuff, but it’s generally true in our day-to-day lives.

My bigger question for this post is: Does it help to keep these sayings in mind? If you were to hang this plaque I designed with the cute elephant in your home, for example, would it help you calm down if you were overreacting to something? I hope so because the piece is for sale in my new Etsy store and I’m hoping it will help people “roll with the punches,” another great expression.

For me, what mostly scales down my anxieties is the combination of two things: being outside and praying, which reminds me of two more quotes. The first is: “It’s impossible to walk in the woods and be in a bad mood at the same time” I totally agree with this statement found on forestfreak.com. The other is “Why worry when you can pray?”—a phrase adapted from Philippians 4:6 and turned into a peppy song. If I could find a good quote that communicates the stabilizing effect of nature and prayer together, I’d display it everywhere around my home and office, because—even with my good strategies—I tend to panic and overact as much as the next guy.

There’s something else to mention. When I need to calm down, I ask myself an important question about the stressful situation at hand. I ask: “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Sometimes the answer is not too bad and I realize I can deal with it. Other times, the answer is nasty. For example, what’s the worst thing that could happen if I don’t start making money? I could end up sleeping between sheets of plastic and newspaper under a bridge somewhere! But then, I reason, even then, if the worst thing happened, with God’s help, I can still deal with it.

Once I engage my faith in such a way, it (my faith) gets stronger, and I relax. Asking yourself the worst-case-scenario question and employing your faith for the answer, is like coming out of a strenuous workout at the gym: you feel stronger; you are stronger. What’s more, you feel calm, you are breathing deeply, and you’re in much better shape for facing that elephant—or fly, whatever the case may be.